Element Zero (23 page)

The channel opened, and Nico was there.

Faye,
he said.
It’s me.

Hello, Nico.

It’s been a long time.

Yes.

I know a lot has happened, but I need you now, Faye. Will you help me?

Do I have a choice?

You know me well enough to know the answer to that. There’s too much at stake.

Fawkes could be the only chance we ever have to stop them,
I told him.

I know. And they might be the only chance we have to stop Fawkes. That’s what I’m left with. That’s what we’re all left with.

So you’ve chosen them?

I’m not looking out for either side. I’m trying to look out for the people stuck in the middle of all this. No matter what you think of his motives, Fawkes set something in motion today. He killed thousands of people who aren’t even part of the thing he’s trying to stop, and he’s used Heinlein to alter the revivor technology inside them.

That stopped me. He was referring to Fawkes’ transmission.

Alter it? Alter it how?

It’s spreading on its own. Jumping from host to host.

That’s impossible,
I said, but even as I said it I began to wonder. It would explain why he needed to occupy Heinlein Industries. It would explain how he intended to keep up his resistance, even after he was gone.

It’s happening, Faye. It’s already out of his control.

A virus. An engineered virus. Was this what the woman, Noelle Hyde, feared all those years ago when she’d sat across from me in the interrogation room? Had her abilities allowed her to see what Fawkes would someday unleash on the world?

If it was true, and she had, then had she witnessed the end of humankind? Or only the end of her kind?

Faye?

I’m here.

Something has to be done. I’ve made my choice. You have to make yours. Who will you trust? Me, or Fawkes?

In my mind, I could almost picture Nico’s eyes. I could almost see the ruthlessness in them, and that certainty in his soul that he was right. I remembered the way he was, long ago, when he put everything he knew on the line because of that certainty. I had envied him that, but in some ways, to truly see in terms of pure right and wrong—Fawkes’s way—was what he railed against hardest.

I’m reactivating your command spoke,
he said. I felt him intrude into my systems, and begin some kind of transfer.

When you do, he’ll track me down,
I said.

I know. This is going to be close. You know Fawkes better than me at this point. You could make the difference.

Nico—

I know you don’t love me,
he said.
I know you can’t, not anymore, but you can still trust me. You can still do that.

The locks I’d placed on the command connection began to break down, and fall away. Immediately I could feel Fawkes there, finding footholds in those new openings, and forcing his way in.

We’re out of time,
Nico said.
Make your choice.

Nico Wachalowski—Stillwell Corps Base

Stillwell soldiers flanked us, escorting us down the hall after an armed garrison unit met us on the helipad. The northern section of the base, where we were, was still secure, but the numbers outside were rising.

The connection to Faye flashed on the HUD. Through her, I would be able to direct a team of five revivors to move a payload of Leichenesser from the processing plant into the atmosphere control center for the Pratsky Building. It was a total distance of roughly a quarter mile, and the clock would begin ticking the second I reactivated her command spoke.

“It’s down!” someone shouted in a room as we passed. “The entire structure is down. Communications are out all over the city—”

Military channels were still functioning, though, and the footage coming in from the street was devastating. Smoke drifted between the buildings below like a gray fog. The Central Media Communications Tower, the second-tallest structure in the city, had been razed in less than a minute. A hollow pit formed in my gut. Not even anger had filled it yet.

“I need to talk to Osterhagen,” I said to one of the guards. “Is he here?”

“He’d just arrived back at the UTTC when the attack began,” he said. “We can put you in touch with him.”

As we walked, I cycled through the data Cal had sent just moments before the explosion—the only lead I had on Fawkes. In it I found lot numbers and stats for the units under his control, circuit information for the revivor network . . . even override codes for the sixth-genand-up revivors on his command spokes.

Good work, Cal.

He’d flushed his visual data regularly, but the last segment was still in there. In the playback window, I watched as he addressed an Asian man and a dark-skinned woman that I recognized from the FBI records as Chen and Shaddrah.

There was no audio, but after a minute Shaddrah nodded and left the room. Chen began to follow her, then turned back as what must have been a private message to him flashed on the screen.

Watch her.

Chen nodded.

The next strike will come soon. If she becomes a problem, you know what to do.

The soldiers led me into a war room where engineers were hunched over terminals in rows. Mounted on one wall was a screen that lit up as we entered, and I recognized the face that appeared as Osterhagen’s.

“You’re on,” the soldier said.

“General, my name is Agent Wachalowski,” I said.

His face was calm, but fury brewed behind his eyes. “I know who you are,” he said. “I’m told you’re recommending we leave Heinlein’s transmitter intact.”

“Yes, sir. Hear me out. I think I know what’s going on.”

“Motoko puts a lot of faith in you,” he said, “but there are millions of lives at stake here, and a preliminary analysis of the data you recovered from Palos Verdes doesn’t prove your suspicions that we’re dealing with some kind of outbreak. The threat of the nukes is real and immediate.”

“With respect, sir, we’ll never be able to analyze that data in the time frame we have.”

Osterhagen thought for a minute, then turned to the men in the room.

“Mr. Vaggot?” One of the engineers glanced up at the screen. His eyes were wide but focused. His fingers moved over a keypad like they acted on their own. “Can you retake control of the satellites or not?”

“I can, sir.”

“In the time frame we discussed?”

Vaggot hesitated. “I can, but not in that time frame.”

“And if we destroy the transmitter?” he asked.

“If Mr. Fawkes had rigged the satellite to launch already,” he said, “meaning, if it was set to launch at a preset time, then the launch sequence would be, in effect, already active. If that were true and we destroyed the transmitter currently controlling it, then it would assume an enemy infiltration, and the launch sequence would be locked down; we wouldn’t be able to stop it. If the launch sequence was not active, then the satellite will be receptive to our control, as long as the proper security codes are presented. At this point, we are confident that the launch code is not currently active.”

“You’re sure?”

“We won’t know with one-hundred percent accuracy until the ’bot reasserts full control, but we’ve got hooks into most of its systems now. I’m sure.”

“Agent Wachalowski,” Osterhagen said. “Fawkes is no doubt gearing up The Eye to fire again.”

“I know.”

“Without that transmitter, he’ll lose control of both satellites, and his ground forces too.”

“I know,” I said, “but I’m telling you—Fawkes used contacts inside Heinlein Industries to develop a Huma variant off the grid. The transmission that halted the revivors earlier fundamentally changed the behavior of the nanotech. He repurposed it.”

“Repurposed it for what?”

“With the help of Heinlein’s engineers, he’s found a way to administer the Huma payload without an injection. They’re spreading it through saliva, through bites.” The Stillwell engineers were listening now. Even Osterhagen’s face changed.

“You think he’s trying to create more revivors?”

“No,” I said. “The dogs we recovered at the train yard had standard M10 revivor nodes, but the engineers worked on different components of Fawkes’s variant. At Black Rock, they were testing the ability to disseminate it through bite wounds. Another engineer designed it to self-replicate so it could be transmitted over and over, but I think the experiment in the Mother of Mercy’s basement was the key. We found evidence of nanotech in their brains, but no revivor nodes. When Van Offo tried to influence the prisoners down there, to calm them down, he couldn’t. Fawkes has been experimenting in secret for years now, trying to figure out what makes you guys tick, and I think he finally did it. He’s repurposed Huma not to make more revivors, but to switch off your influence. To trigger Zhang’s Syndrome in the general population and give them their memories back. That’s what this is about. He is trying to wipe you out, but not in the way you think.”

“How can you—” Osterhagen started, but I cut him off.

“I can’t prove it, but I’m telling you I’m right. It’s affected me as well. I know it’s true. At this rate it will spread beyond the city in hours and we have no idea what it will do. If you destroy that transmitter, you’ll never—”

On Cal’s recording I saw Chen nod, then turn and leave the room. The angle of the feed changed as Fawkes returned his attention to a console in front of him. Data streamed across the screen. His hands, almost skeletal now, moved quickly over the keypad. An image I recognized as a map of satellite positions hung at the top of the screen. He was inputting coordinates.

“What is it?” Osterhagen asked. I checked the time stamp on Cal’s recording.

“Sir, how long would it take The Eye to spool up for another shot?” I asked.

“We predict thirty minutes,” Vaggot said.

According to the time stamp on Cal’s footage, the satellite had to have already been aimed at the CMC Tower and was preparing to fire when it was recorded. That meant that on the recording he was entering in the data for a different target; his next target.

While I watched, a list appeared in Fawkes’s HUD, mapping over the recording. There were several more sets of coordinates there in a column. When I ran them through the GPS, I found the location of the target he’d just entered.

“General, I know what Fawkes’s next target is. He’s going to fire on the UTTC.”

“How—”

“I’m forwarding the data to you now, but get out of that building.”

“Sir,” Vaggot said. “In a worst-case scenario, you have maybe twenty minutes. We will not have control of the satellite by then.”

“The UTTC is under siege at the moment,” Osterhagen said. “We can push our way out but it will be a bloodbath, and it will take hours.”

“Can we destroy The Eye?” I asked.

“Fawkes has threatened to launch if we try.” He looked thoughtful for a minute.

“Sir, I have a contact inside Heinlein Industries,” I told him. “I may be able to take Fawkes out from the inside.”

“We can have a short-range missile in the air in five minutes,” one of the soldiers said, “and destroy that transmitter in seven.”

Osterhagen nodded. He didn’t say anything for several seconds.

“Sir, what do you want us to do?” the soldier asked.

“Ready the missiles,” Osterhagen said, “but don’t launch without my order.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No matter what, you do not fire those missiles without a direct order from me.”

Two men snapped a salute and rushed out of the room.

“Alto Do Mundo is next on the list after the UTTC,” Vaggot said, looking at Cal’s data. “Then a list of major utilities; water, power, and transportation.”

Osterhagen nodded again and met my eye.

“She believes in you,” he said.

“I know.”

“You’ve got five minutes,” he said, and his image winked out.

MacReady, we need to go now.

I understand.

Faye, will you help me?

She didn’t answer right away, but she did answer.

Yes.

I cycled through the list of override codes that Cal pulled from Fawkes’s memory, and queued up Faye’s, just in case.

We’ll have one chance, Faye.

I have shared Fawkes’ security information with Mr. MacReady. He’s found five revivors that can form a chain without leaving their individual security zones, but it won’t take Fawkes long to realize something is wrong.

Understood. Get ready.

I hope you’re doing the right thing, Nico.

Me too.

I pushed down the packages that Calliope had given me over the circuit, and they began to install themselves. Her command spoke back to Fawkes went live, and I saw him try to take control. He tried to issue her override code, but it wasn’t accepted. After that, he began to run a trace on her physical location. It wouldn’t take them long to reach her.

Calliope’s shunt initialized and created the virtual command hub inside Faye’s system. Stealth connections began to open, riding on an unused portion of the command matrix. They made the five connections, and five remote feeds appeared on my JZI. I was inside Heinlein.

The five units I selected form a relay starting in the processing plant and ending in Central Atmosphere Control,
MacReady said.
Use them to move the Leichenesser payload between zones.

Two of the feeds came from the processing plant; through a set of doors, I could make out rows of bodies that hung from the ceiling. The other three waited outside in different parts of the campus, staring through the snow at the plant in the distance.

I sent the virus, and it replicated over each channel. It dropped into the primary node of each revivor and began to worm its way into their systems. In less than a minute, the mirror-spoke endpoints went active.

I’m taking control of them now.

One by one, I issued the overrides and took remote control of the revivors. Their systems were reflected back, giving me full access.

“Four minutes, Agent,” a voice said.

I scanned the layout of the processing plant and located the Leichenesser stores that MacReady had called out. I sent one unit to retrieve the payload from storage. The automated system responded and retrieved a single crate containing a series of pressurized metal tanks.

One will be enough,
MacReady said.
The Leichenesser is in liquid form, and highly concentrated.

Understood.

I sent the target revivor the route to take, making sure to keep it inside its designated security zone. I kept the feeds open to monitor them, and waited as the first revivor moved to the storage locker.

None of the others seemed to pay it any notice as its black hand gripped the handle and pulled open the heavy steel door. Mist drifted out of the gap as it slipped through the fog and into the freezer chamber.

The rows were filled with stores of chemicals. The revivor passed by them as it followed the location on the manifest and found a single rack of thin, glossy black canisters. Each one was labeled with multiple warnings and marked with a biohazard trefoil.

The revivor removed a single tank from the container and headed back through the mist toward the freezer door. It pushed it open, and kept an even pace as it headed for the plant’s western exit.

How long will it take the gas to saturate the sublevels?
I asked MacReady.

Not long,
he said.
I’ve shut off the blowers to the lab, but they don’t need to stay that way. The gas won’t affect me.

On the feed, the revivor’s optics isolated a figure through the snow. It waited near a fence at the processing plant’s perimeter. The feed bobbled rhythmically as the revivor began to run the canister over to it.

Agent Wachalowski, I understand your feelings in this matter,
MacReady said,
but I think it’s time to let her go.

My fingers curled into a fist, tendons crackling.

I know.

It would be safer to—

I know. We still might need her.

Is that the reason?

This has to work, no matter what the cost. But do what you can to save her.

I will.

The revivor on the feed reached the second one in the chain and handed off the canister. I switched over the active feed and watched through its eyes as it turned back to the metal door behind it, where a sign was mounted:

PRATSKY WEST

Over the feed, I saw an incoming call request appear on Faye’s system. It was flagged urgent.

Faye?

That’s Fawkes,
she said.
He’s looking for me.

Stall him. The payload will be positioned soon. How long will it take once you start the air circulators?

Five minutes to get the Leichenesser into position; another ten for the saturation to reach critical.

MacReady’s estimate would put me past Osterhagen’s deadline, but still inside the window before The Eye could fire a second shot. If the Leichenesser was already released, I might be able to convince Osterhagen to wait.